North Korea's No 2 visits South for rare talks

North Korea's presumptive No 2 led members of Pyongyang's inner circle on a rare trip today to South Korea for the close of the Asian Games, with the rivals holding their highest level face-to-face talks in five years.
After months of tensions, including a steady stream of insults between the divided neighbors and an unusual number of North Korean missile and rocket test firings, expectations for a breakthrough weren't high, but even the visit itself was significant, allowing valuable contact between confidants of North Korea's authoritarian leader and Seoul's senior official for North Korean affairs.
One analyst called it a "golden opportunity" for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to test North Korea's willingness, at the highest levels, to improve shaky ties, but it seemed unlikely that Park would meet with the aides to North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong Un.

The North Korean delegation to the games in the South Korean port city of Incheon was led by Hwang Pyong So, the top political officer for the Korean People's Army and considered by outside analysts to be the country's second most important official after Kim.
Hwang is also a vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission led by Kim and a vice marshal of the army.
The visit comes amid rumors in Seoul about the health of Kim, who has made no public appearances since September 3 and skipped a high-profile recent event he usually attends.

A recent official documentary showed footage from August of him limping and overweight and mentioned his "discomfort."

It wasn't immediately clear what Hwang and his delegation talked about in a closed-door lunch meeting with South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae and national security director Kim Kwan-jin.
Unification Ministry spokesman Lim Byeong Cheol told reporters that there were no plans for the North Koreans to meet with President Park.
That could be a mistake, an American analyst in Seoul said. This visit of "a very high-octane group" offers Park a unique chance "to test the North Korean leadership's will and intentions," said John Delury, an Asia specialist at Seoul's Yonsei University.
"Historically, North-South breakthroughs start from the top down, and if Park is serious that she wants to improve relations and jumpstart the reunification process, this is a golden opportunity," he said.

Both sides expressed hope for better relations in comments to the media ahead of the talks.